THIS IS NOT A COMMERCIAL WEBSITE.THIS IS MY PERSONAL COLLECTION AND IT IS FOR SALE​

War is all about destruction - architecture is all about construction.

World War II begins for Belgium and the war brings about the occupation of Brussels. Anyone who can read a newspaper knows that it is far from over.

Louis Uytterels is, by this time middle aged. He has been a successful architect in Belgium and has been involved in the creation of Le Musee du Livre, a publication that since the early twentieth century has celebrated the art of print advertising.

He knows that there will be no more designing of buildings for some time. He is too old to be a soldier or work for the Resistance but, as a Belgian patriot, he can use his talents to document the history of his country as he waits out the war.

armory of Leaders, Monarchs, nobility and consorts

​of the ancient territories now covered by Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany and France.

Louis Uytterels was born in and had lived in Brussels all his life. He was a successful architect, well respected in his profession. He was also an artist. In the early 1920s, he was part of the group that created Le Musee du Livre - a yearly collection of samples of the work of all printers and print advertisers in Belgium. This enterprise continued into the 1950s.

But now the war had come to Belgium. Anyone who could read the newspapers could see that this horror was far from over. There would be no work for an architect, no matter how talented, until the war's end. Louis is middle-aged and too old to be a soldier but he is a patriot. He is a man of many talents and many interests. He is fascinated by the history of Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, France and how war has come and gone throughout the ages. Leaders have risen, have led and have died. Royal heads have rolled and others have accumulated territory and grandeur simply because of an accident of birth. Some have displayed brilliance and great courage, others have been greedy and ruthless. It's all there, in the history books.

Long fascinated by heraldry and the powerful people it represents, Louis begins his project - it is how he will wait out the war and its destructiveness. It is also how he will celebrate his country and understand how its past had led to this war. Until he can once again build for the future, he will explore and document the past with his artistic abilities.

In the years that follow, he carefully inks and paints the heraldic arms of those powerful people, starting before Julius Cesar to the present. When the war ends, he continues his project to its completion at his death in the early 1960s. The last powerful man whose coat of arms he creates is Beaudoin I, King of Belgians. You will note that he did not have time to decorate this final coat of arms with pearls and gems, as he did all the others.

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Louis was my father's step-father. I didn't know Louis well as a child and completely lost any contact with him after my parents immigrated to Canada in 1956. Louis had no other relations and so, when he died, his belongings were sent to my father in a number of strong cardboard boxes. The boxes remained, barely explored, in my father's basement until 2010.

I inherited those boxes and in them, I discovered the beautiful work of this man I barely knew. I believe that this collection of heraldic plates, carefully drawn and rendered in ink, watercolour, gold and silver leaf and ornately encrusted with imitation pearls and gems should not live in a box in anybody's basement. It is history and as such should be shared with the public whose history it is.

On the home page, you will find a slideshow of the 97 heraldic plates themselves. The resolution of the photos is deliberately poor to discourage pilfering. You may go forward or back using the two arrows on the sides of slide show.

As I worked to produce this inventory, I researched each personage and event celebrated in these plates, I realized that the collection was nothing less than a chronological history of the country of my birth. To find out more about them, I visited the Wikipedia pages dedicated to these very real human beings. I have given you a link to these Wikipedia pages by clicking the caption below the image of each heraldic plate. Even if you are not passionate about heraldry, you will find the life stories of the people represented by the heraldry both fascinating and educational - as I did.

Because Louis created these plates in French, the French Wikipedia pages are referenced above and the English Wikipedia pages below. In some cases, Italics are used to explain a missing page in English. Wikipedia has a "translate" feature that will allow you to read and French Wikipedia page in English.

This collection is for sale. If you are interested in acquiring it or if you wish to make arrangements to see it in person, please contact me using the form on the Contact page. I may be willing to donate the entire collection in Louis' memory to an appropriate museum or not-for-profit historical society or an educational institution. Please contact me by way of the Contact page.

I still speak French (poorly) and unfortunately have not spoken Flemish since I was a child and can no longer converse in or read it. With my apologies to my former countrymen and women, this webpage was written in English because I have grown most comfortable writing in this language. The captions on the plates themselves are in French because that's the way Louis labelled them.